


Drabbles

by stonyindustries



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Trailer, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Maria Stark's A+ Parenting, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Self-Destruction, Steve Rogers Has PTSD, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Superfamily, Tony Stark Has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-20
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-01 08:09:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 2,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17863607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stonyindustries/pseuds/stonyindustries
Summary: A collection of drabbles from my tumblr @stanthonystarkTags and summaries for individual fics are in the notes





	1. Devotion

**Author's Note:**

> Devotion: Steve and Tony’s relationship, told through a series of “I love you’s” (inspired by @bigstarkenergy’s ‘i love you’ on AO3 and tumblr)
> 
> Tags: superfamily (minor), character death

“I love you.”   
The first time was stars and fireworks and a giddy kind of desire. A Fourth of July spent alone together, looking down at the crowds below.   
It slipped, seemingly of its own accord, from between Steve’s lips and he looked as surprised as Tony felt. It was jarring, but it was also like a breath of fresh air, everything suddenly made startlingly clear.   
He had always loved Steve Rogers.   
That first time was hope and joy and more genuine than anything Tony had dared to hope for before. 

“I love you.”   
The aftermath of their first battle as a couple was shock and relief and adrenaline-filled. It was a desperate collision of lips and gripping of clothes and a juvenile happiness in something sparkling new. They were on top of the world.

“I love you.”  
Gasped out between harsh breaths and the sound of skin against skin. Guttural moans and ragged breathing and all the time in the world. After they were both spent, they curled up on Tony’s mattress and slept, Tony pressed close to Steve’s chest as he dreamed of everything he could finally have.

“I love you.”   
Coming out to the world together. Questions and flashes of cameras, overwhelming support and crushing disapproval. It didn’t matter, they would always have each other.

“I love you.”   
Whispered over their son’s head as he lay between them, asleep. Proud parents keeping watch and a new chapter of their lives together. A family, one blossoming with excitement and nurtured by possibility.

“I love you.”  
A promise of everything they ever dreamed about, everything they were both robbed of, with their friends bearing witness as they exchanged vows.  
In sickness and in health, from saving the world to raising their son, they are each other’s constant.

“I love you.”  
A blessing and a mantra through their darker days, an flippant reminder on their best.  
At last, Tony knows with a visceral certainty that this it for him, this is where he was always meant to be, in every universe, every conceivable version of him would be with Steve Rogers. He couldn’t imagine it any other way.

“I love you.”  
A rough murmur over an empty casket adorned with stars and stripes. The lack of a body weighs on everyone and adds to their sorrow, but he feels a weary acceptance wash over him, even as the knot in his chest tightens.  
He mourns his husband, his best friend, his soulmate in every sense of the word, while all around him the world mourns their soldier.  
He swallows the lump in his throat and stares up at the sky as rain patters softly against the coffin.

“I miss you.”


	2. Mutual Salvation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They find comfort in each other

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Steve Rogers has PTSD, Tony Stark has PTSD, hurt/comfort

Tony’s eyes are brown. Deep brown, like chocolate, like coffee, like the mud that covered their boots in the trenches as they raced after Hydra in European forests, the sounds of humanity’s most well remembered failing echoing behind them.

No

Stop 

He takes a deep breath.

Tony’s eyes are brown. Like chocolate, like coffee, and the woven mahogany of their bed, upon which he has built trust after nightmares and made memories nothing else can touch.

—

Steve’s eyes are blue. Like the sea, like the sky during a starry night, like the reactor as Obie pulled it out of his chest while he lay there helpless, watching his life being pulled out of him in a cruelly literal way. Like the jacket he’d last seen his mother in before-   
Don’t 

Go back

He grips the table

Steve’s eyes are blue. Like the sea, and the sky during a starry night, and the paper on which he sketches their future.

—

They are both each other’s greatest strength and fatal weakness


	3. Gods & Titans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve comforts Tony after a battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)

“How do you do it?”  
Tony’s standing in the middle of his workshop, hands braced against a bench, shoulders hunched.  
“How do you-“  
He breaks off, shaking his head

Steve leaves the plate of food he had brought balancing on a mess of haphazard parts and approached Tony carefully. He lays his hands on his shoulders and rubs gently as he runs through the battle in his own mind.

Some lunatic proclaiming a new world. Cleansed of all sin, a world supposedly made free. But to build a new world the old one must be torn down. Same old HYDRA mantras, same scum of the earth bastards. Same genocidal, yet pathetic, plans for humanity.

Maybe that’s why this one was so hard. This week’s villain was just the latest in a steady stream of people begging to wage war on their fellow human beings, but the number has been increasing lately and each seems more malicious than the last. 

Although, Steve muses, it doesn’t really matter why it’s so hard to deal with, to process, especially in the aftermath. All that matters is whatever they’re left with.

Guilt.

For Tony, who insists he can make a shield worthy of the forges of Hephaestus himself.

For Steve, who perpetually tries to relieve Atlas of his burden, forgetting that he himself is no immortal. 

But they are mere gods among men, men who, when willing, can harness nature and command the environments around them. Men who have raced ahead, faster than evolution, constantly reaching for the stars and the heavens that they have always longed to touch.  
Men who have defied Death herself.

But these men have also wrought pain and invited Death into themselves, paved her a pathway of skys filled with smoke, children’s cries for lost futures, lives cut short with the smell of copper and gunpowder.

It is more often these men the Avengers must deal with, must eliminate from the Earth like one does to an unpleasant insect in one’s home. 

It takes its toll on all of them.

“How do you not give up, because they’re gonna keep coming back, no matter what we do. For every bastard’s ass we kick, there’s ten more lining up to kick ours.” It’s a quiet demand, spoken roughly before Tony pauses and straightens. He moves away from Steve’s hold, over to a tumbler and picks it up white-knuckled, staring at its amber contents as they slosh around in the glass.  
“Cut off one head, two more take its place, right?”

Steve remains quiet, carefully considering his response before responding.  
“My faith is in people.”

At that, Tony gives him a sharp look, mouth opening with a no doubt cynical response curling on his tongue, but Steve hurries on.  
“I know it’s hard, sweetheart.” Steve cups his chin and tilts it so he’s staring into his eyes.  
“I know sometimes it doesn’t feel worth it, when things like today happen, when people are demanding and hateful and everything seems against you. But people are capable of so much good as well.  
And that’s part of why we fight, to make the world a better place, to encourage and preserve that goodness that humanity has.”

He pauses again and breaths. The quiet rings in his ears.  
“I wish it didn’t have to be this way, and maybe one day it won’t, but for now in order to truly know good, there has to be bad. In order for people like us to exist, people like them must exist too.”

“Everything perfectly balanced, huh?”

-

Years later, it’s not without some irony that Tony hears these same words said back to him, in an utterly different context.

But it is with the hope and faith he learned that day, the kind only man is capable of, that he knows he must forge on.


	4. Sacrifice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the aftermath of Civil War, Steve reflects on the meaning of sacrifice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: post-cw, angst, implied/referenced alcohol abuse/alcoholism, hurt Steve Rogers

Steve had always insisted he’d do anything for Tony.  
Move heaven and earth, cross hell or high water. He’d taken bullets and much worse for him before and always brushed it off like it was nothing. Because it was, it was easy; that sort of choice.  
And it was hardly worth calling a sacrifice, despite how much Tony shouted whenever it happened, the number of times he’d slept on the sofa after those particular arguments, all the time they wasted.  
But they always apologised, after. Comforted each other with reassuring touches and careful moves.

So it was never a sacrifice because he never truly lost anything.  
But Siberia?  
Siberia taught him what sacrifice truly meant and the pain that came with it. Siberia was the hardest sacrifice he would ever make.

He remembered wanting, desperately, to go back. Help Tony up, bring him home, make everything better as they usually did.  
But he was well aware the damage he’d done, the pain he caused, was more than he could ever hope to heal.  
But, God, that didn’t mean he didn’t love him.  
Still.  
Even after everything.  
He loved him so much and that was why he left him.  
Because Tony would be better off without him.

Or at least that’s what he told himself now, sitting in his room in Wakanda, shoulders hunched, head in his hands, forcing shaking breaths in and out.  
Tony is better off without you.  
He thought he knew what sacrifice meant, after crashing the plane, after putting his life on the line so many times.  
But he had no idea.  
He could never imagine this kind of loss, this kind of pain and guilt and self-loathing, not before Siberia.

God, he wished he could get drunk.


	5. What Does Love Look Like?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The colour of love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: n/a

Loving Tony Stark is red.  
It’s fiery and determined and passionate like nothing else he’s ever known. It’s unfailing courage and bright vigour and soft sensitivity underlying.  
It’s summer berries and red roses in extravagant displays, expensive crimsons and Afghan sands that creep up on their stolen victim, but Steve whisks him away and grounds him, feet planted in red soil.

Loving Steve Rogers is blue.  
It’s sincere and sweet and steadfast. It’s a kind of freedom he’d only dared to dreamed of and an ivory pillar in their fast-paced world.  
It’s bright summer skies and walks along the beach with the sea lapping at their ankles, trying to reclaim its former prisoner, but Tony anchors him and keeps him present, the blue of the reactor guiding him home.

Their love is purple and rises to touch the skies and beyond. It is powerful in a way they can never know and peaceful in a way they will always cherish and it is _theirs_.


	6. A Mother’s Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maria writes a letter for Tony while Sarah talks to her son

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: howard stark’s a+ parenting, maria stark’s a+ parenting

_My darling Anthony,  
I’m sorry you’ll never get this letter. I’m sorry I’ll never have the courage to give it to you and I’m sorry I’m not good enough to raise you in the way you deserve._

“Stevie, love,  
I wish I could give you what you deserve. I did what I could, God knows, but I wish I could have done more.”

_Already, I can see you have your father’s gift with machines, but I think you also have the heart that he was meant to have. That won’t always serve you well, not with him. But I beg you to be brave, my boy, be strong. Be better than your mother and your father combined, because you are._

“You have an angel’s heart and a lion’s bravery and your father would be proud.”

_I hope you’ll get the life you want someday, although Lord knows you won’t find it here. Go somewhere, Anthony, and build something for yourself._

“I wish I could watch you live out your life, but I know you’re going to be okay. Go somewhere, Steve, and make yourself a home.”

_I’m sorry I can’t do more for you, but I know you’ll grow up to be more._

“I’m glad I did what I could.”

_I’m sorry I can’t be what you need_

“I wish I could be there for you.”

_All my love,_

“I love you.”

_Your mother, Maria._

 


	7. What You Deserve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve mulls over the events of Civil War and makes a rash decision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: post ca:cw, hurt Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers needs a hug, depression, self-destruction, implied/referenced torture

Natasha tries to persuade him to call Tony and damn her, she can be persuasive. She tells him that Tony’d pick up, that he’d be willing to meet, to sort things out. And he almost cracks, almost breaks down and buckles, is almost weak enough a second time.  
But then he almost had a chance with Tony.

It’s this thought that stops him, allows him to shake whatever selfishness and temptation had taken hold, hand pausing and clenching around the phone. He’s not stupid; he knows he doesn’t deserve whatever Tony is willing to give and knows he deserves the kind of misery his life has become. So he slips the phone back in his pocket and tells himself out of sight, out of mind and wishes it were true.

He moves on, or rather, he moves around, goes on missions, trains. It’s not living and it’s certainly not moving on. He still wakes with guilt and self-loathing eating away at him, festering in his heart, but he can’t quite bring himself to feel regretful about that because he knows he deserves it. That’s been his only constant since Siberia, that one thought playing on a loop.  
He deserves it he knows, this half life that’s not worth living, but, God, the others don’t.

Sam, Natasha, Clint, Wanda, who all had to leave their lives behind because of him, because of his stupidity. Or maybe that’s a little arrogant; he knows that they made their own decisions independent of him, but fuck if that guilt doesn’t weigh on him anyway. Every goddam day. And there are days he can breathe through it, grin and bear, but that strength is wearing down quickly and he’s exhausted all the time and he’s well aware that he looks like shit; cheeks too hallow, eyes too dark. He doesn’t miss the concerned glances the others try to sneak.

They’re all so goddam worried about him and he can’t take it anymore, he doesn’t deserve this.  
He knows it’s reckless, he knows it’s stupid, he knows it’s some kind of self-flagellation, but one day there’s too much noise and his voices won’t shut up and he’s going insane, so he leaves. He hides his face behind a pair of sunglasses and pulls a cap low and he flies to Washington. Contacts Ross and asks – begs – him to negotiate.  
Trades his freedom for the freedom of his team.

And through it all he can hear a voice he’s made to sound like Tony’s screaming at him. Begging him to just stop, fucking think, you idiot. But he soldiers through, because that’s what he’s always done, he’s not sure he knows how to do anything else. Maybe Tony could have shown him.  
And he kicks himself mentally at that because that was the fucking problem wasn’t it. He’d needed Tony too much, took whatever he could and gave little in return; he could see that now. He could see it so clearly and he hated himself for it. He looked back on the years and despised the man he’d somehow become, the selfish bastard that led him to where he was.  
But that wasn’t even the worst part, it was what it took to make him see that that was worse. Those fucking Accords and Bucky and the airport and that video and _I can’t breathe_.

He’s not sure how long he’s left alone in the Raft – days, weeks – before Ross comes in and tells him to get up and not try any star-spangled shit.  
He leads him to a room, a lab, white walls and machines and equipment Tony would have known the names of. Ross tells him to stay there and shuts the door behind him and Steve thinks, hopes, he imagines how final the clang of it sounds.  
It’s only a few seconds before they come in and tell him to lie on the bed in the corner, one he hadn’t noticed earlier. They poke and prod and take samples and he tells himself this is fine, this is what he deserves, even as his chest aches and his breathing shakes.

It’s almost bearable until they start the tests, their experiments, and suddenly, seemingly overnight, Steve can’t stand the sight of white coats and needles, cringes whenever someone comes near him and outright flinches when they touch him. His nightmares of Siberia are laced with drugs and Lord knows what else and he wakes up shaking, tears running down his face.  
And through it all, he’s almost thankful. That he’s getting what he deserves so he can finally be at fucking peace. And if he sometimes dreams of Tony’s soft tones, of Natasha’s reassurances and Thor’s warm humour, Clint’s wry remarks and Bruce’s kind nature and _family_ , well, that’s no one’s fault but his own.


	8. What Never Really Was

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stranded in space, Tony looks back on his relationship with Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tags: Tony Stark needs a hug

This is Steve Rogers. Without the shield, the symbol, the weight of the world resting solely on his shoulders. This is the man behind the idea, the humanity that overcomes the soldier.  
This was their life together, happiness and unity.  
This is what could have been.

Instead, it’s just a photo – no, it’s not even something as substantiate as that; it’s a hologram. Projected from the helmet as he records what he thinks – knows – will be the last words anyone on Earth ever hears from him.  
It’s just a hologram, this image of them, together at some gala or maybe a restaurant, he can’t even remember. It doesn’t matter, it was never real anyway. It’s just a hologram, transparent, meaningless, and he doesn’t think he likes that kind of symbolism.

This is Steve Rogers. Smiling back at him, happy, laughing, lying. This is what could have been and what never really was.  
Tony aches for it anyway.


End file.
